This week will go down as a difficult one in the history of Indiana University, the Big 10 school in the town where I live and my alma mater. Dozens of people, students and faculty, have been arrested as they peacefully protested the war in Gaza. The arrests were made easier by the university's administration, which, under the literal cover of darkness on Wednesday night, convened an ad-hoc committee to change the rule that had for more than 50 years designated Dunn Meadows, where the protesters gathered, as a free speech zone, and to mandate a one-year ban from the university's property for all the arrested.
I cannot tell you how to feel about the war and won't try. I, for one, would want both the Israelis and the Palestinians to be able to enjoy peace and safety. I would want the mutual dehumanization to end and for empathy to take its place. Whatever your thoughts, though, you must be free to express them on a campus of a public American university. You must not be subject to violent arrest while a sniper has you in their sights.
I obviously spend much time thinking about policing thought. About censorship, book bans, freedom of the press, and the freedom of intellectual inquiry. After all, Controlled Conversations tackles this topic. The story's backdrop is Soviet-controlled Poland, but we must remember that authoritarianism doesn't care about whether the state or corporations control the means of production. Democracy, whether it's on the scale of the entire country or a town or a university is a good thing, and it deserves our protection while we still have some semblance of it.
(Image credit: @IUonStrike)
